About Me

Manu Sharma New Delhi / Gurgaon, India

Since mid 2006 I have grappled with climate change and what it means for us. As an activist and campaigner, I sought to learn and simultaneously, attempted to influence the issues surrounding it - in technology and policy advocacy. As a consultant, I studied markets and created portfolios in sustainability services and renewable energy investment.

After thousands of hours of research, tenacious activism, working up-close with NGOs as well as the industry, delivering about two dozen public talks, countless conferences, hundreds of online discussions, a few media appearances (including Reuters, News Television, and BBC radio), and continuous evolution of my own ideas about what ought to be done - I may have found some answers but the issue remains far from being addressed.

In the despair filled world of climate change the only place I've found real and lasting hope is in a beautiful vision inspired by "The Ringing Cedars of Russia" book series by Vladimir Megre. The books have triggered a transition movement in Russia and have profoundly influenced me. I am now working towards the vision.

Climate Revolution Initiative, an RTI campaign I founded and ran for a few years is now retired. I no longer deliver talks. I still consider myself an activist though and occasionally post on Green-India group started over nine years ago.

Older entries in this blog relate to my former occupation in user experience design; long time interest in business innovation, strategy, ethics; and venture creation.

Image on top of this bar is courtesy book covers of The Ringing Cedars series published under Croatian translation. (Source)

November 27, 2003

MSN: a Copybot

Last week MSN launched Newsbot a news aggregation service in competition with Google News. I'm astonished that Microsoft had the audacity to use exactly the same design as Google. Admittedly, the look and feel is different but the page structure is an exact imitation. I previously mentioned a quote by Google's Marissa Mayer that it took them a good 64 iterations to finalise the Google News interface. Now Microsoft is reaping the benefits by making a simple copy and paste. It seems that the only thing that has changed is the stylesheet.

A few months ago Google served a "Cease and Desist" notice on Amazon Light - an Amazon.com associate that utilises Amazon's API technology for its own user interface - asking it to drop its imitation of Google's search interface. As a result, the site had to alter the design to comply with the demand.

Will Google protest against Microsoft? It's doubtful. Pushing Microsoft isn't easy. But should Google at least take it up with them? Absolutely. Microsoft's Newsbot clearly represents a blatant disregard to its intellectual property. It's a propreitary design developed at Google so they will be within their rights to lodge a protest. However, since the legal route for contesting an interface design copyright is a bit slippery, it's unlikely that it'll happen.